Healthy Simmons leading Jefferson

Posted: Tuesday, March 27, 2007

The way Alex Simmons sees it, the knee surgery that caused him to miss a substantial portion of the season last year was a blessing in disguise.

"Looking back on it, in a way, I'm glad it happened," said Simmons, who pitches and plays first base for Jefferson. "It made me work that much harder when I got back because I was so far behind everybody else. Since that time, I've continued to work hard and that has really paid off."

The Dragons, who at 11-0 and 4-0 in Region 8-A are off to their best start in nearly a decade, are clearly reaping the benefits of Simmons' admirable work ethic and leadership.

"Alex is one of our leaders," said Jefferson coach Tommy Knight, whose club travels to Athens Academy to face the Spartans in a region game at 7 p.m. today. "He's a young man of great character and he's always encouraging his teammates to do extra work. He's not afraid to go the extra mile to be a great player and he's not afraid to speak up if he thinks somebody isn't hustling."

Last week, the red-hot Simmons posted the kind of numbers some players would be pleased to have for an entire season as Jefferson slammed Prince Avenue, Lakeview Academy and Hebron Christian by a combined score of 57-10.

Against Prince Avenue last Tuesday, the 6-foot-4, 200-pound right-hander pitched a four-inning perfect game, striking out seven of the 12 batters he faced and throwing 37 of 49 pitches for strikes as the Dragons downed the Wolverines 15-0. He also helped his own cause by going 1-for-3 with an RBI in a game where Jefferson scored 12 runs in the second inning.

Two days later, Simmons flexed his offensive muscles by collecting two home runs, two singles and eight RBIs in a 26-10 slugfest victory over Lakeview Academy. And on Saturday, Simmons closed out the week with what was perhaps his least-stunning outing, going 3-for-3 with two RBIs and three runs in a 16-0 win over Hebron Christian.

"I'd say he had a pretty good week," chuckled Knight, now in his fourth season at Jefferson. "When your 'bad day' is going 3-for-3 with two RBIs, you know you've had a good week. I can't remember ever having a player who had a week like that - I've known some who had a season like that, but not a week."

Said Simmons: "I don't think I've ever done anything like that before. And I had no idea the week would just keep getting better and better."

Simmons said he stuck mainly to his fastball-curveball combination against Prince Avenue because his newly developed split-finger pitch wasn't behaving.

"It was mainly curveballs and fastballs and I was hitting my spots and working the corners," he said. "My splitter wasn't working, but that's OK. I was pumped before the game because Prince beat us twice last year but, shoot, I never thought it would turn out like that."

In reviewing the Lakeview Academy game, Simmons admitted he'd faced better pitching and added he wasn't the only player who had a productive day.

"I was seeing the ball extremely well," he said. "We were all seeing it well. I've never had a two-home run game. I only hit one home run all last year, so it was all new to me."

Although Knight was reluctant to make any long-range predictions based on the Dragons' sizzling start, he does feel he's the skipper of a memorable crew.

"We've got a good group with six great seniors," said Knight, praising Zach Kles, Kyle Sexton, Brannan Wilburn, Ched McClure and A.J. Schnelle. "When you've got kids like this, it makes it easy to be a coach. If we keep playing the way we have been playing, we'll have a solid season. But we've still go a long way to go."

Simmons is expected to start today against the Spartans.

"I do feel this is a special team," he said. "We played some good teams in the fall and did well. I knew back then this team was capable of doing some special things."